Ever since I was about 4 years old, I’ve wanted to see the world. When I was 7, I used to draw world maps out of my head. I also told my mom, “I want to learn ALL the languages…except German. It just sounds like you’re angry all the time.” Fast forward 20 years: I speak only 3 languages, I’ve visited far fewer countries than I’d like, and only lived in two – my native South Africa and the UK. Now that my 20s are almost over, I feel the geographical clock ticking.
I’ve also been a writer for as long as I remember. Like other little girls, I played with Barbies, but not because I loved their long blonde hair or because I liked to dress them up in pretty clothes. They were the actors in my plays, the heroes and villains and saviours and traitors of the melodramatic world in my head. When I was 6 years old and about to start Grade 1, I told my mom, “I want to go to school to learn to read and write. And then I can leave.”
Where exactly am I going with this? Well, this little girl grew up and forgot about all of that. She found out that people have to work to make a living, and the kind of work that most people did made her miserable. She hated details and schedules and logistical planning, and she hated sitting at her desk all day, seeing no one but the people in her office, implementing other peoples’ ideas. At 11pm in a dingy B&B in the middle of nowhere, after quitting her job and embarking on a disastrous road trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town, she got a call offering her a scholarship to study a Masters degree at her dream university in the UK. She was ecstatic!
After a mindblowing year in Brighton studying at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), making the most interesting friends from all over the world, having craploads of fun on Brighton beach (spoiler alert: there’s no sand, just pebbles), and learning so much her mind felt electrified, this little girl returned home to Cape Town and felt kind of…meh. She did the jobsearch thing, but her heart wasn’t in it.
The jobsearch progressed, and the little girl was on the point of being offered a well-paid job with a good organisation in Cape Town that would be a great next step in her career. And all in a flash, she realised she didn’t want it. She wanted to travel! And she wanted to write! And she wanted to do work that she wanted to do, with young people who had the passion and energy to make a difference in the world. As luck would have it, she also managed to secure a freelance writing gig for a great new website aimed at young South Africans. So she turned down the job offer, and decided to leave the place she knew and loved for a totally uncertain and insecure future in a country that fired her imagination: India.
That’s me, in a nutshell. But this blog won’t be all about me, because really I’m not that interesting. It’s also about people doing amazing things to change the world! It’s about people making a life for themselves despite overwhelming odds. It’s about the big issues and the little issues that affect our world and our lives, that sometimes we’re too busy watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to think about.
So sometimes you’ll read about adventures in India: moments of panic, moments of frustration, moments of peace, moments of love. Sometimes you’ll read my thoughts on topics both obscure and current, from my issues with consumerist culture to structure vs. agency to cultural appropriation (it won’t be boring I promise!). Sometimes you’ll read stories about the people I meet in the places I go, or stories entirely woven from the bits and pieces of my imagination. Sometimes you’ll want to say “wtf, Mel?!” and want to give up on me (please don’t!). I will always endeavour to be interesting, easy to read, and maybe, just maybe, a little inspiring.
